Don Quixote

By
Miguel de Cervantes
Biography

 Miguel de Cervantes lived from 1547 until 1616 in a period that spanned
the climax and decline of Spain's golden age.

 He shared the ideals of an idealistic national purpose that led to Spain's

glory and downfall at a time when the nation was the Catholic bulwark
against a reformation-torn Europe and against the ravishing advances of
the aggressive Turkish power.
 Born into poor circumstances, Miguel Cervantes was the fourth son in a
family of seven children. His father, Rodrigo, was a surgeon, one of the
salaried employees of the university of Alcala de Henares, the birthplace
of Miguel, and he earned very little to feed his family.
 When he was twenty, Miguel joined the army with his brother Rodrigo.
He fought bravely, receiving two shots in his chest and a wound that
rendered his left hand useless the rest of his life.
 This lacerated hand was his glory, and the bravery he showed at Lepanto
earned him a document of recommendation. He also campaigned in Tunis,
Sardinia, Naples, Sicily, and Genoa, learning much about Italian
culture during this period of service.
 Returning with Rodrigo to Spain, their ship was captured by pirates and
both brothers were sold as slaves in Algiers.
 Biography
The story of his incredible bravery during those five years is almost legendary, for Cervantes schemed
again and again, not only for his own escape, but for the liberation of numerous fellow slaves, knowing
full well the atrocities reserved for punishing escaped Christians.

The bloodthirsty Dey of Algiers, Hassan Pacha, however, was impressed by the audacity of the maimed
Spaniard and spared him.

In 1580, Cervantes returned to Spain, without any means of livelihood.

 Out of desperation, he began to write for the theater, but of as many as thirty or forty plays only a few
have survived.

At the age of forty, Cervantes married the daughter of a well-to-do farmer, Catalina Salaza y Vozmediano.
His marriage was not a successful one. At this time of life, Cervantes had to support, besides his wife
and daughter Isabel, his mother, two sisters and the widowed mother-in-law.
 Biography

It is during this period that Cervantes learned to know the Spanish peasant, and his stored-up knowledge
was to result in the creation of Sancho Panza.

Cervantists disagree whether or not the Seville prison was where he began to write Don Quixote. In the
preface, the author hints to the reader that "You may suppose it [Don Quixote] the Child of Disturbance,
engendered in some dismal prison . . . "; this line is the basis for controversy among biographers.

Finally completed in 1604, the Quixote was an immediate bestseller. Running into six editions a year
after that, Cervantes derived no further profit from the book, other than the money originally paid him
by his publisher. Sixty-seven years old, still dogged by poverty and with his health failing, Cervantes
began the sequel to Don Quixote only to find that a pirate edition of his idea had become popular and
therefore, he quickly completed Part II.
 Biography

Between the ages of 57 and 69 Cervantes published his Exemplary Novels, twelve stories of Spain which
survive as perceptive accounts of the local life of that time.
He also published some plays, Eight Interludes and Eight Comedies, which manifest a dramatic talent that his
earlier pieces never quite achieved. 

Although Don Quixote is one of the most read novels in the world, as well as one of the longest, and continues
to be a bestseller, the life of Spain's greatest author is less known than the lives of lesser literary figures.
Cervantes believed implicitly in religious orthodoxy and military heroism.

 Like Don Quixote, Cervantes traveled through life with a strong sense of purpose. Meeting with misfortune
and disillusion like his hero, Cervantes contributed to civilization, possibly as a result of his own life's
experiences, the people and the values of Don Quixote.
 Plot Overview
Alonso Quixano, a less-than-affluent man of fifty, "lean bodied" and "thin faced, lives modestly in the Spanish
country village of La Mancha with his niece, Antonia, and a cranky housemaid. Practical in most things,
compassionate to his social peers, the local clergy, and the servant classes.

Quixano is respectful toward the ruling classes, whom he unquestioningly accepts as his superiors. He is driven
neither by ambition for wealth and position nor bitterness at his genteel poverty.

Well read and thoughtful, Quixano's most prized possessions are his books. From his readings and studies, he
becomes by degrees interested, then obsessed, with the codes, deeds, and tales of chivalry — of knights errant
on some courtly and idealized mission.

As his appetite for the lore of chivalry increases, Quixano begins selling off acres of his farmlands, using the
funds to buy more books, and increasingly throwing himself into his studies. "From little sleep and too much
reading his brain dried up and he lost his wits. He had a fancy . . . to turn his passion knight errant and travel
through the world with horse and armor in search of adventures" with the purpose of "redressing all
manner of wrongs."
 Plot Overview

At length, he is galvanized into action by his passion for the chivalric code. Outfitting himself with some
old rusty armor, Quixano enlists his spavined hack horse to go forth in search of knightly
adventures. Hopeful of finding a proper noble to dub him, Quixano finally is licensed in his venture
by an innkeeper who believes him to be a lord of a manor.

Now Quixano is "Don Quixote de La Mancha"; the tired hack and dray horse becomes "Rosinante.”

All the new knight needs now in order to venture forth is a lady to whose service he is sworn and a
servant. For the former, he chooses Dulcinea del Tobosa, named after Aldonza Lorenzo, a farm girl
whom he had been taken with at one time.

After three days on the road, Quixote encounters a group of traveling salesmen whom he attacks after
they refuse to acknowledge Dulcinea's great beauty. He is badly beaten by the servant of the salesman
and forced to accept the help of a neighbor, who brings him home on the back of a donkey.

.
 Plot Overview
While he is recovering, his housekeeper, a barber, and a priest burn all his books on chivalry in an attempt to
persuade him to give up his improbable quest.

But this only fuels Quixote's determination. He persuades Sancho Panza, a plump, simple-minded-but-
opportunistic laborer, to serve as his page, by playing on his ambitions. Don Quixote promises Sancho his own
island to govern, for surely such a splendid knight as he is sure to become will soon take many spoils.

And so this pair set forth, Quixote on his spavined old horse, Panza mounted on Dapple, his mule. Their
second adventure lasts for three weeks and is comprised of a series of events that comprise the balance of Book
One. Among other things, Quixote battles windmills, thinking them to be giants.

At an inn, which he mistakes for a castle, Quixote is visited in bed by a maid, who causes a great uproar when
she discovers she has come to the wrong room. Refusing to pay the bill and accusing the innkeeper of being
inhospitable, Quixote is rousted, only to fall promptly into another misadventure with a religious procession, and
yet other ironic and error-prone encounters with locals.
 Plot Overview
Interspersed among these adventures are a series of stories and moral tales, illustrating the pastoral
storytelling tradition in Spain. As well, there are two long, learned disquisitions, delivered by Quixote:

The first is a description of the Golden Age of mythology, told during a supper shared with some unlettered
goatherds who don't understand a word he says. Later on, Quixote addresses a company during dinner at an inn
in a debate about whether the career of arms is superior to that of letters, or vice versa.

Throughout the adventures it becomes clear that Quixote, for all his seeming madness, is a mild-
mannered, empathetic man, genuine in his concern for chivalric ideals.

Although he has agendas of his own, Sancho Panza has come to believe in and show loyalty to his new master.
But in spite of all his good intentions, Quixote's quest leads him to be returned home, imprisoned in a cage
on an ox-cart by his village priest and barber for Don Quixote's own good.

Published in a separate volume, Book Two of Don Quixote's adventures contains a unique feature. Shortly
after Book One was published and Cervantes was at work on Book Two, he got word of the appearance of a
pirated Book Two in which the author, a writer named Avellaneda, presumed to write further adventures of the
knight, going so far as to renounce his service to Dulcinea.
 Plot Overview

 Cervantes was at Chapter 59 in Book Two, having Quixote and Panza headed to a jousting tournament in Saragossa. Now,
angered by the pirated version, Cervantes sets forth in revenge by having Quixote and Panza eating dinner at an inn
and "overhearing" talk of the Avellaneda version.

 The knight and squire promptly set forth to Barcelona, home of Don Alvaro Tarfe, a character from the Avellaneda book.
When they arrive in Barcelona, they kidnap the Avellaneda character.

 Book Two also introduces the character of Samson Carrasco, a young man from Don Quixote's village. A recent graduate of
Salamanca University, Carrasco takes on the earlier roles of the priest and the barber in attempting to rescue and keep
Don Quixote away from danger, but Don Quixote is not interested in being "rescued.”

 He is determined to go to Tobosa to pay his respects to Dulcinea. They encounter three peasant girls and by some
deception, Sancho hopes that his master will accept one of these as being Dulcinea. When events or appearances run
counter to his expectations, Don Quixote tends to believe that enchanters have worked their mischief. In this instance,
he believes enchanters have made Dulcinea look like an ugly peasant girl .
 Plot Overview
 Don Quixote unexpectedly wins a battle with a knight (The Knight of the Mirrors), who turns out to be none other than
Samson Carrasco in disguise. Samson had hoped to get the Don back home to safety by disguising himself as a rival
knight. The plan backfires. Shortly afterwards, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza meet the "Knight in the Green Topcoat,"
which includes the episode of the lion with whom the Don wants to do battle.

 The major portion of this section is devoted to an unnamed duke and duchess who, with their retainers, play a series of
pranks — in the form of burlesque pageants — on Quixote. They also cause injury to both the knight and his squire. Another
vital element is the appointment of Sancho Panza as governor of an island — another elaborate prank that ends with Panza
renouncing the life of a feudal governor and showing a deep layer of loyalty to Quixote.

 Once again Samson Carranzo appears, this time at the beach in Barcelona where, in the guise of The Knight of the White
Moon, he challenges Don Quixote to battle. Of course, Quixote accepts the challenge and, in the presence of the viceroy and
a distinguished company, is roundly defeated. A condition of Quixote's defeat is that he abandon knight errantry for the rest
of his life.

 In the remaining chapters, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza return to La Mancha, but not before they experience an
additional stay with the Duke and Duchess and sundry other humiliating experiences suffered by the ex-knight.

 When they arrive home, Don Quixote, apparently broken in spirit, is put to bed. After a long sleep, he declares his name
to be Alonso Quixano once more and appears to have regained his reason. Shortly after he denounces chivalry and
knighthood, he dies among the lamentation of friends.
 Characterization
To characterize Don Quixote, one can call him the idealist, although, as shown in specific discussions, the
straightforward nature of Alonso Quixano is often glimpsed under the veneer of the knight's posturing. Don
Quixote is a madman, or rather, an "idealist," only in matters of knight-errantry.

He discourses practically on matters of literature. He is capable of sincere and he is the mirror of courtesy itself.
Don Quixote is honest and chaste, and, in general, is loved by the people in his village who know him.

An interesting tension of his personality is between these virtuous sane qualities and those developed through
his peculiar madness. Imperious, he is stung quickly to anger when he suspects that the institution of knight-
errantry is questioned.

His sense of duty results in a sometimes-disastrous meddlesomeness. Poetic and sensitive, according to the ideals
of the age of chivalry, Don Quixote sings well, composes verse, and is helpful to the distressed. Beyond that,
of course, loom the visions and ideals and the seeking for absolute truth and justice which a quixotic faith entails.
 Characterization
Sancho Panza's struggle between his love for his master, upon whom he depends so completely, and his own
sense of reality continues throughout his squire's career. He believes nothing, for the Spanish peasant is
skeptical of all but his own experience, yet, by virtue of his unlettered ignorance, is infinitely naïve. It is through
this naivety that Sancho follows his master and eventually believes fully in him.

At first, when he tries to imitate Don Quixote by words and trickery, not by emotion and faith, he is unsuccessful
and succeeds only in confusing himself. Nevertheless, he shares his master's desire for immortality, for he dreams
he will govern an island.

Sancho finally rises to quixotic heights when, at the bedside of the moribund Quixote, he begs the Don to leave
off this nonsense of dying when there are so many deeds of valor yet to be done. At the summit of his faith,
Sancho implores the now-sane madman to "come to his senses" and take up knight-errantry once again. His
confusions at an end, Sancho realizes that the madman he served pointed the way to clearheaded truth.
 Characterization
In his relationship with his master, Sancho Panza represents the practical realist. He is the "corrective lens" for
what the world would consider Don Quixote's distorted vision. Their separate reactions to the same episode
provide the reader with a sort of stereoscope through which to view the world of Cervantes with two lenses
focused to produce a three-dimensional image. 

The tension of their opposing personalities, however, is resolved on their separate paths to glory. Sancho has his
island to dream of, and Don Quixote envisions his valorous deeds. The two are furthermore bound by the
same sort of ties that link father to son or teacher to pupil. Cervantes amplifies these dependencies in many ways.
A novice in the practice of chivalry, Sancho learns and imitates his master as a student would of his tutor.

Integral though their relationship is, Sancho and Don Quixote are universal because each is the ultimate in their
own character types. The way they develop in their relationship, however, and their thoughtful responses to life's
experiences are also universal. They provide a realistic model of how human beings become educated, and
this process of learning and reacting to life is part of the psychological maturation of everyone.
 Themes
Quixotism:
Quixotism is the universal quality characteristic of any visionary action. Acts of rebellion or reform are always quixotic, for the
reformer aims at undermining the existing institution in order to change it. Often held up to ridicule, frequently destroyed, the
quixotic individual has been responsible for many great deeds in history and, conversely, for many misdeeds.

Many outstanding madmen in the world, trying to move lethargic populations to better themselves, have been isolated in history.
Seeking only "truth" or "justice," the truly quixotic heroes have an internal vision so strong as to see through the illusion of
external appearances. Don Quixote, for example, defies universal institutions so taken for granted that everyone thinks they are
harmless windmills, though they may be threatening giants, inexorable machines destructive of the individual.

Quixotism, then, is a will power defying materiality. It is the attempt to make a utopian vision a reality, but like all utopias, it
is unacceptable in a world where absolute values cannot survive. Don Quixote, though he often triumphs over disillusions, must
eventually face it, and die.

In expressing and developing the quixotic individual, Cervantes has discovered and defined another avenue of exaltation and self-
expression of the human soul. Thus it does not matter whether Don Quixote is a burlesque of chivalry, or whether the hero is a
madman or an actor. What matters is that he is indelibly set free in our imaginations and discovers for us a new
quality about the human spirit.
 Themes
Reality and Fantasy:
A discussion of the many facets of this reality-fantasy investigation throughout Don Quixote would fill many books,
but some suggestions follow. The hero, as has been said, has the ability to change reality with the force of an idea.
Fantasy and reality to the madman are aspects of a continuum which he does not have to lower himself to question;
not so for Sancho, who is always in the throes of trying to understand the difference between the two qualities. 

To complete the plotting of the fantasy-reality continuum, Cervantes explores the truths of dreams. The crowing
illusion, perhaps the most fitting, is when the dying hero renounces his mad life of knight-errantry, telling the
weeping household that he is no longer Don Quixote de La Mancha, but Alonso Quixano the Good. At this moment
of utter sanity, the hero expresses the wish that his past acts be consigned to oblivion.

So zestful of life that he idealized human possibilities by trying to initiate a new Golden Age of innocence and
contentment, Don Quixote now expresses the ironic futility of quixotism and underscores that fantasy and reality are
phases on a continuum. The sane hero denies his past madness in a final affirmation that life is a dream, death
the moment of reality. Sancho's inheritance is the stored-up spirit of quixotism which enables him to recognize the
truth of ideals and either become a knight-errant himself or imbue his children with the imaginative spirit.
 Themes

Minor themes:

Romantic love is often depicted in the novel. Among all the various courtships that take place, their common quality
is a love between the two people despite parental disapproval or unequal birth. Cervantes obviously disliked
"arranged marriages" and idealizes a wedding of a mutually affected couple with the blessings of their families.

Subordinate to the theme of law and justice, Cervantes introduces the bold theory, implicit in the story of Sancho's
government, that a man of the people who knows and understands their problems can become a better governor than
a man born to authority. Sancho became loved and respected by the citizens of his island, and they begged him to
remain. To this day, Cervantes adds, laws are promulgated which are called "The Constitutions of the Great
Governor Sancho Panza.“

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